Tag Archives: jerky

My third favorite food, after bacon and coffee ice cream, is jerky—and of those three only jerky remains edible after being forgotten in a pocket of your golf bag for an entire season. I am theoretically capable of making my own jerky, because a couple of years ago my wife bought a dehydrator. Her intention was to use it to dry sliced fruits and vegetables, which she would then sprinkle on salads and so forth, but it can make jerky, too.

In truth, though, the only thing we’ve used her dehydrator for, so far, is rescuing her iPhone after it spent almost an hour soaking in a grande latte, which she had spilled into a cake pan on the floor of her car. When she finally realized what she’d done, she put the phone in a bowl of uncooked rice, the way people always say you’re supposed to. Suddenly, though, I thought of her dehydrator (which by then was in storage cabinet in the basement). I baked the phone for a week—and it recovered! The dehydrator she owns is currently selling on Amazon for sixty bucks. That makes it almost worth buying just so you’ll have it on hand the next time you drop your phone into a toilet.

Even if you own all the right equipment, the easiest way to acquire jerky is to buy it. My favorite brand at the moment is Chef’s Cut, a company started by two caddies, who virtually overnight went from making jerky between loops to being pretty rich. Hundreds of golf clubs now stock their products, and if yours doesn’t do that yet you can look for Chef’s Cut at the grocery store or order it online. My favorite version is Chipotle Cracked Pepper, but there are others.

And, if you are one of the many men who prefer to take their nourishment in Slim Jim form, Chef’s Cut offers that, too: